Congressional leaders on Jan. 7 announced they had reached an agreement in principle to fund the federal government for the nine months that remain in fiscal year 2024.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) agreed to limit federal spending in the fiscal year that runs through Sept. 30 to roughly $1.65 trillion. That is about what former Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden (D) agreed to last spring.
The House and Senate will now have to reconcile differing versions of the 12 annual appropriations bills or pass an omnibus bill to fund all federal agencies. As of Friday, neither the House nor the Senate had scheduled votes on any appropriations bills. Federal funding for the Department of Energy runs through Jan. 19 under a bill that holds spending to 2023 levels.
This week, a fringe group of House Republicans, a coalition including most of the lawmakers who initiated McCarthy’s ouster in the fall, vowed to oppose any funding bill or bills based on the new bipartisan agreement.
“We must reject this ‘deal’ w/Dems,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said Tuesday on the social media platform X. Good chairs of the House Freedom Caucus, which includes many of the fringe Republicans who ousted McCarthy and opposed the spending deal.
Also this week, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the minority leader in the House, vowed that Democrats in the chamber would not vote for anything other than a bill or bills based on the agreement.
“To the extent that House Republicans back away from an agreement that was just announced a few days ago, it will make clear that House Republicans are determined to shut down the government,” Jeffries said Thursday during a Capitol Hill press conference.
Under the stopgap budget that is in effect for about another two weeks, DOE’s Office of Environment Management will receive the annualized equivalent of an $8 billion budget for cleanup of shuttered nuclear-weapon production sites. That is about $300 million less than the House approved in its full-year 2024 spending bill and nearly $500 million less than the Senate Appropriations committee approved in a separate 2024 spending bill.
